1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a diffusing reflector and method of manufacturing the same reflector and moreover a reflection type display apparatus utilizing the same diffusing reflector.
2. Description of Related Art
A display apparatus utilizing a liquid crystal as an electro-optical layer is formed in the flat-panel shape characterized in thin and light weight structure assuring low power consumption. Therefore, such display apparatus has been developed for wide application field such as a display of hand-held devices. An electro-optical substance such as liquid crystal is not self light generating type and displays an image by selectively transmitting or shielding the external light beam. Such passive type display apparatus can be classified into the transmission type and reflection type depending on the lighting system.
In the transmission type display apparatus, a panel holding liquid crystal, for example, as the electro-optical layer between a couple of transparent substrates is produced and a light source for lighting (backlight) is arranged at the rear surface of the panel and an image can be observed from the front side of panel. In the case of this transmission type, the backlight is essential and a fluorescent lamp, for example, is used as the light source. In the case of considering the display apparatus as a whole, since the backlight consumes the greater part of electrical power, it is not suitable for display of hand-held device. Meanwhile, in the case of the reflection type, a reflector is arranged at the rear surface of panel, while external light such as the natural light is incident to the front side and an image can also be observed from the front side by utilizing the reflected light thereof. Since the light source for lighting the rear surface is not used different from the transmission type, the reflection type display apparatus consumes less amount of electrical power in comparison with the transmission type and therefore it is suitable for display of a hand-held device.
In the reflection type display apparatus, display is realized by utilizing the incident light from the peripheral environment, it is essential to aim at improvement of brightness by effectively utilizing the incident light. Moreover, it is basically required to realize diffusing reflection of the incident light in the panel in order to realize the white display called as so-called paper white. Therefore, the reflection type display apparatus of the related art comprises in many cases a diffusing reflection layer within the panel. This diffusing reflection layer has the surface including fine unevenness and also has the characteristic approximated to the perfect diffusion in order to show the external appearance of paper white as much as possible. However, it is difficult to conclude that the reflection characteristic is sufficient for practical use and it has been considered a problem of the reflection-type display apparatus of the related art to improve the condition of unevenness from the stages of design and process in view of improving the reflection characteristic thereof.